Happy holidays, challenge fans! In the spirit of the season, I’ve written a Santa Claus challenge for you, titled “Santa Claus is Hacking to Town.” This one is adapted from the classic 1970 Rankin & Bass television production, which used stop-motion animation and nifty puppets to tell the story of Kris Kringle. As a child, this was one of my favorite Christmas TV specials, and I’m thrilled to recast it as an ethical hacking challenge. You don’t need to be familiar with the original TV show to participate in the challenge, of course. Analyze the clues, devise your strategy, and carefully answer the questions to win a prize. Answers are due by December 31, 2008. We’ll choose three winners (best technical answer, most creative answer that is technically correct, and a random draw winner) to get a copy of my book, Counter Hack Reloaded, the ultimate stocking stuffer. Even if you can’t answer all the questions, send in your best guess to qualify for that random draw slot.

Even though you don’t have to be familiar with the original TV show to answer the challenge questions, for those of you who haven’t seen the original Santa Claus is Coming to Town TV show or want to relive that childhood wonder of watching Kris Kringle grow up into Santa, you can watch its five parts on YouTube here:

I completely agree, these challenges are great and are always a fun thinking exercise. Whether you win the challenge or not, it's always fun to try to figure out how to solve these problems, and then to see how others solved it when the challenge is done.